Reference
X962/R16
Title
Interview with William Cosby, born 20 June 1954, Leighton Buzzard. Sand quarry and brick worker. Interviewed by Carmela Semeraro.
Date free text
Interview date 14 October 2008
Production date
From: 2008 To: 2008
Scope and Content
(0 mins)
Gave up work in 2006 following minor stroke – recent heart bypass operation –hoping to return to work – had previously been a driver of heavy machinery.
Keen fisherman in summer – using local canal. Largest fish caught - 23¼ pounds. Called ‘Bill’ – born in Queen Street, Leighton Buzzard - 20 June 1954.
(05 mins)
Raised in his gran’s (mother’s mother) house until the age of 11 years. Mother, grandmother, Bill and two sisters (one older; one younger than Bill). Moved, with Gran, to Nelson Road. Grandfather had been killed in a quarry accident – 5 October 1923, aged 36, when Bill’s mother was 2 years old and Gran was 32.
Mother was a brilliant cook and, with his sister, good at knitting. Gran took in washing. All members of family had to make a bit of money to keep the family going. Bill’s mother – one of 4 children. Grandma did cooking and cleaning at a house called The Lion’s Den in Plantation Road – a large house owned by the Metts family.
(10 mins)
Both Bill’s mother and grandmother were excellent hand knitters – all the family had Aran jumpers.
(15 mins)
Bill’s father was a coach builder at Vauxhall Motors in Dunstable for around 38 years. They had a pretty good upbringing and childhood. Father and three other Vauxhall workers who lived in the Leighton Buzzard area shared the cost of travelling there by shared car. Once children were at secondary school, mother earned ‘pin money’ working – Goldings perfume factory (L’Oreal etc), then Lipton’s tea factory. Schooling at Beaudesert School in St. Andrew’s Street, then one called the ‘Glass School’ in East Street, then to Mary Bassett School in Bassett Road, then to Brooklands Secondary School.
(20 mins)
As older children, from around 11 year’s old, Bill and friends would walk up Vandyke Road to Shenley Woods – play football on a recreation ground – go fishing with a cousin. At school – enjoyed woodwork and technical drawing – not keen on academic subjects. Left school at 15 – worked for Keymarkets, a large store in the High Street, Leighton Buzzard.
(25 mins)
Earned £4.19s 6d per 40-hour week (around 1970) at the supermarket – unloading goods from lorries to the warehouse – crates on wheels – stacking them around store. Worked all day Saturday with one day off mid-week.
Aged 18 got a job at the at Stonehenge brickworks – heavier work, sorting and loading bricks on to vans – more money. Bricks came out of presses, taken down to auto claves where they were steamed, then cooled. Acid dipped to bring out colour
(30 mins)
Brick colouring programmes – pressure testing special bricks for special purposes – Reject bricks went to be used as footings for buildings (foundations). 15-20 minute process forming a brick – then autoclaves – steaming at 120-130 pounds per square inch steam pressure – 24 hour total process.
(35 mins)
Stayed there about 4 years. Pay about £12 per week, including Saturday morning. Moved to work in sand quarry, then later to tile works – pay about £20 per week. – producing concrete roofing tiles. Colouring process using a slurry.
(40 mins)
Hard work – used to “eat like a horse. I was built like a tank and I used to really enjoy it. It used to feel good”.
On Saturday nights – from around 16, had a drink in a pub where everyone knew you – friendly – entertainment, singing around the piano, songs everyone knew – “more pleasant than today”. Met his wife-to-be when he was 15 years old – started going out together – married when around 19-20 years old. Wanted kids while young – decided to wait to buy house after they had grown up and family were better off – worked out OK. Many of their friends also married young. In those days, if a girl got pregnant the boyfriend stood by them and married them. “I don’t think there is the respect about now…you would respect the neighbours, you would respect your elders basically, teachers, etc. You don’t see any respect these days.”
(45 mins)
“I think people are mollycoddled. I mean you are not allowed to hit your children.” His father left it to their mother to discipline the children. He went out and earned the money and she would look after us at home. Mother wasn’t really that strict – he supposed “in a way I was spoilt as a child”.
When they lived in Queens Street, there were four police houses – two of them immediately opposite their house – so they used to behave themselves.
Bill has two children, a boy and a girl. His son joined the army when 16½ (he’d decided when 13). “I suppose I did whack him round the ear a couple of times when he was a kid but he was very good and so was my daughter; I didn’t really have to discipline them at all hardly.”. Son became army electrician.
(50 mins)
Bill was worried when his son served in the army in Kuwait – worked on the water pipe lines, as an electrician, during the Iraq war –he was in the Royal Engineers. Now over 30 years old, off the reserved list. When Bill’s son was born he was working as a driver of a dumper and bulldozer for Arnolds at Double Arches. In the washing process for the sand.
(55 mins)
Originally, sand was bagged by hand – then one-hundred-weight sacks moved using sack barrows – then a conveyor belt was used to load lorries later more mechanisation and less labour was required. Pallets and fork lift trucks assisted loading. Bill moved on to ‘untopping’ – removing the three inches of top soil to open up new quarries – use of the drag-line ‘navvy’ machine to remove clay – plus three dumper trucks and a bulldozer.
(60 mins)
25 foot of clay could be taken out in one go by a ‘navvy’ to a depth of 60 feet – that amount is not allowed in one movement today, for safety reasons. Now it has to be taken off in 15 foot steps. Health and safety rules have made working in quarries much safer. When Bill started you were equipped with a safety helmet and dust mask but few people wore them and there was no obligation. Now machines have totally dust-proof cabs.
(65 mins)
Now, protective boots and hard hats are mandatory. Training has also improved considerably – workers have to prove their competency before taking on a role, assessed by a specialist. One lapse of concentration can do a lot of damage, when operating a bucket holding 7 tons of sand.
(70 mins)
Experienced drivers now give one-to-one tuition to all trainees and in an area where you are not going to do any damage. Nobody takes risks these days. Unless you can prove you are properly trained you are not allowed near machines. Safety records for the quarrying industry have improved as a result. 9 times out of 10 – accidents are caused by drivers doing something they should not be doing. But “health and safety is a lot easier to see in other people, than it is in yourself”. At Arnold’s for about 5 years.
(75 mins)
Long hours – 7am to 7pm, Monday to Thursday and a shorter day on Friday and Saturday, finishing at 4pm – 6 days a week. Remembers having to pay a mortgage at one time of 15% interest and managed to keep a roof over the family’s head – he was always willing to do any hours possible. After Arnold’s – moved to Redlands tile works in Grovebury Road – then to Marley Tiles Company. While the miner’s strike was on, they went down to a three-day week so he left and became a fibre glass laminator for caravanettes. Once the building trade improved he returned to tile work. (When the building trade went down, mortgages tended to go up, so he was hit twice through reduced income and more outgoings.) He then worked for a firm in Kimpton Road making bumpers for Vauxhall motors.
(80 mins)
2001 – took a job at Grovebury Quarry. It still traded under the name Garside’s because the name and logo is well-known even though it had been taken over many times and was now Swedish-owned. New processes, compared with when he first started in sand industry – use of water jets into sand face and vacuums to suck the sand, fired into a tower as slurry.
(85 mins)
Takes a couple of days to drain – and be dried. Various types of sand: iron sand – refined sand for football pitches such as Wembley, which are taken up and changed each close season; sand for filtering water, such as at swimming pools; sand for glass works and for sand blasting to clean buildings. Sharp sand used for plastering.
(90 mins)
End of interview
Summarised by Stuart Antrobus (17 November 2009)
Exent
90 minutes
Format
Wave Sound file
Reference
External document
Level of description
item